Psalm 80:1-7 To the leader: on Lilies, a Covenant. Of Asaph. A Psalm
Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth 2 before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up your might, and come to save us! 3 Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved. 4 O LORD God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers? 5 You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure. 6 You make us the scorn of our neighbors; our enemies laugh among themselves. 7 Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.
Psalm 80:17-19 17 But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, the one whom you made strong for yourself. 18 Then we will never turn back from you; give us life, and we will call on your name. 19 Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.
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Isaiah 64:1-9
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence– 2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil– to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4 From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. 5 You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. 6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7 There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.
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Luke 1:1-23
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, 3 I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.
5 In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6 Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. 7 But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.
8 Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. 10 Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. 11 Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. 13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. 14 You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. 16 He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” 18 Zechariah said to the angel, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” 19 The angel replied, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. 20 But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.” 21 Meanwhile the people were waiting for Zechariah, and wondered at his delay in the sanctuary. 22 When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He kept motioning to them and remained unable to speak. 23 When his time of service was ended, he went to his home.
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The season of Advent is, and always has been, considered the “New Year of the Church”.
One author I was reading this past week puzzled over the fact that the church would choose Advent to start the year. He asked: why not Easter, with its victory over death? Or why not Pentecost, with its baptism of fire – the birthday of the church? With Advent, he said, our new year starts not in victory but in the “shadows of war, sorrow and hate”. This is exactly where our God of grace arrives.
Therefore on our Advent wreath we have candles of “hope, peace, joy, and love – to light against the shadows of despair, war, sorrow, and hate.”[1] We celebrate Advent because it’s the time when God defeats the darkness in our world – and that’s what the light of these candles shows us.
So it’s fitting that our Advent series this year is called How Does a Weary World Rejoice? It’s a line taken from the Christmas carol O Holy Night: “A thrill of hope – the weary world rejoices; for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn…”[2] You will see artwork and other things related to this theme through the coming weeks.
I think it’s an especially good theme for this year, because our world really does feel weary right now. We’ve made it through the pandemic (more or less, though we’re still caring for people here and there who are still catching COVID). We hear story after story about wars in places like Ukraine and Israel, places where many of us have friends or loved ones. We pray for peace, but peace seems very slow in coming. Day after day we hear about more shootings and we wonder what it might take to put a stop to them. And in just the past couple of weeks, even locally, there have been delivery truck hijackings and check-writing scams… it’s that time of year when money is flowing and people are doing whatever they can to jump into the stream of cash and grab a handful.
Strange way to celebrate the birth of Jesus, isn’t it?
All of these things weary us. They wear on our souls. And if we happen to be of a certain age (like myself) and are just generally tired to start with, or if we are waiting for answers, or if we are waiting for things we hope will happen, or if we’re searching for someone or something we can trust in this world, or if we find ourselves living the same routine day after day after day – all of these things wear on our souls. They weary us. They make us look to God and say “Lord, how long?”
Our scriptures for today tell the stories of people who were also living in weary times. In the passage from Isaiah, the people of Israel have started to come home after their long exile in Babylon – and they return to Jerusalem to find that the city has fallen into ruins. The people look at the piles of stones, and the breaches in the city walls, and the overgrown fields, and they feel weary just thinking about all the work that’s going to have to be done to make a life here possible again. This was not the homecoming they dreamed of or hoped for.
And in our passage from Luke, the people of Israel are living under Roman occupation – which they are bone-tired of – and they are hoping for the promised Messiah, but they’ve been waiting for so long. When the angel Gabriel comes to Zechariah and says “you will have a son who will be great in the sight of God” – Zechariah looks at his old body, and his wife’s old body, and all he can see is weariness.
People in both of these passages cry out to God to be present, to be here with God’s people, and save us from the pain and the tragedies and the weariness around us. For us in today’s world, as the SALT Project says:
“in an age of struggle and conflict, many people are already in the shadows of suffering, anxiety, exhaustion, and grief. A key message of Advent and Christmas is that such shadows are precisely the place where Jesus comes, and where the church is called to go.”[3]
In this time of year we are reminded that Jesus is on the way – both in Advent and in the promise of His second coming. God is indeed coming to be with us and to save us from the pain and tragedy and weariness of our world.
But waiting is not easy! Isn’t it easy to relate to what Isaiah says to God: “Oh that you would tear the heavens and come down!” Lord, what are you waiting for?? How much worse do things have to get before You step in? And Isaiah’s words echo the heart of Psalm 80: “Lord, be with us – be among your people again! – bring peace, bring blessing.”
This morning we turn first to Isaiah – and again, Isaiah is writing during that time when the people of Israel had been captives in Babylon for seventy years: at least two generations. There are very few people in the crowd listening to Isaiah who are old enough to remember the glory of Israel back when it had a king and a temple. For the past seventy years, Jerusalem has been the home of robbers and wild animals and the poorest of the poor. As the people begin to return home, they find any buildings still standing after seventy years crumbling, overgrown with weeds, and anything that was of value long since stolen. In their grief the people cry out to God: “oh that you would tear the heavens and come down!”
This passage in Isaiah reminds me in a way of something a young adult said to me recently: “I wish we had known what life was like when people were safe.”
What this person meant was, a world like the one I grew up in: a world in which we didn’t have to be afraid of being shot, a world in which people didn’t steal a password and empty your bank account, a world in which people didn’t steal someone’s identity, a world in which was safe to walk across downtown from one end to the other – by yourself – even if you were a woman. A world in which it was safe for children to play in each others’ back yards or even in the streets, like we used to – “come home when the street lights come on” – remember that? My young friend said, “I would like to have known what it was like to live in that world.”
I wish she could. I wish I could take her and all the people in the younger generations back to those days for a visit.
Of course, if we’re honest, we know this world is not a safe place, and never was… but there was a time when we weren’t constantly worrying about safety. Having to think consciously about our own personal safety 24/7/365 makes a person weary.
So we turn to God and we say: Lord, please forgive wherever we’ve gone wrong. Lord, you are the potter, we are the clay – take us in Your hands and work with us. Work out our flaws, work in strength and wholeness. Come, set our world to rights. Lord, our weariness has shaken our hope.
“Let your face shine so that we can be saved.”
That cry from Psalm 80 is so right on the mark, because this world is beyond our ability to set right. Being good is not enough; and going to church won’t make the change. We need God. We need God to “let [His] face shine so that we can be saved.”
And then as we turn to the story of Zechariah – whose name, by the way, means “God remembers”. How cool is that? God’s people are not forgotten!
Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth are descendants of the ancient priestly families of Israel – they can trace their family tree all the way back to Aaron in Moses’ day! Both of them have lived lives of great faith and service to God’s people, and Zechariah in his old age still serves in the temple. Their one great sadness in life is that they never were able to get pregnant – and now they are past child-bearing years.
One day as Zechariah is serving in the temple, an angel appears: and not just any angel, this is Gabriel, the captain of the heavenly forces! Gabriel says to Zechariah, “you will have a son, you will have that joy and gladness you’ve always wanted; and he will be great in God’s sight, and (most importantly) he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before birth.” Which, by the way, is true, because a few months later when a pregnant Elizabeth meets a pregnant Mary, the baby John “leaps in her womb” when he hears the voice of Jesus’ mother. (Luke 1:41) Unborn babies – they know things!
But I’m getting ahead of the story. In this particular moment, hearing Gabriel’s message, Zechariah can’t believe it. He answers, “but we’re both old.”
Now this is something I can relate to. As a woman in my sixties I cannot imagine anyone saying to me “you’re going to have a baby!” I would be stunned, shocked… and scared! With all the aches and pains of old age, getting pregnant could be dangerous. And I’m not sure my husband would be nuts about the idea either.
Zechariah asks, “How can this be so?” For those of us ‘of a certain age’, doubt and uncertainty has a way of creeping in. If any of us find that disappointment or disbelief is sneaking up on us… Advent is a good time to bring these things to God. God knows where we are; God knows our physical and spiritual weaknesses; and God can restore hope in us.
As Advent begins: let me ask each of us to give some thought to this question: what weariness, if any, do we carry today? What is it that makes our hearts, or our minds, or our spirits, bone-tired?
For anyone who is having a particularly difficult time during this time of year, that’s why we’re offering the Blue Christmas service this year – for people who want to be with God at Christmastime but without all the holiday noise – just a quiet time with God. If you know anyone who needs this please invite them to come.
For the rest of us who are simply weary – how can we rediscover hope? The people at the SALT Project say, “Before broken hearts can be healed, they need to be heard. The truth and the feelings must be named.”[4]
We can bring these feelings to God in prayer – whatever they are. We do not need to hold back with God – God knows who we are and where we are and God knows how to deal with it! Remember Isaiah and the people of Israel crying out to God – “rend the heavens and come down”. Whatever it is, we don’t need to be shy about telling God our difficulties and asking God for what we need.
And for those of us who are not feeling in any way weary or down at this time of year – I’m so glad to hear it! Try to spend some time encouraging those people who are down. (SALT says:) “Name the truth, honor the losses, and [stand] in solidarity with our neighbors in pain: [be] a candle in the middle of the night.”[5]
When Isaiah cries out to God: “you have hidden your face from us; but we are the work of your hand – restore us… repair the land…” – this is the request to which Christmas is the answer: the coming of Jesus the Messiah. Isaiah calls on God to be ‘God-with-us,’ and that’s exactly who Jesus is.
God’s promise is that this dark night will end; that this weariness does have an end to it; that this Advent time of waiting will come to a joyous end; and the answer of Christmas will be the greatest news of joy this world has ever heard. AMEN.
[1] SALT, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2017/11/27/keep-awake-lectionary-commentary-advent-week-one
[2] Adolphe Adam, O Holy Night
[3] SALT, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2017/11/27/keep-awake-lectionary-commentary-advent-week-one
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
Getting Started 